Designers of vehicles have embraced technology in recent years. Some of the technologies that have been incorporated into vehicles include electromechanical systems, such as automatic liftgates and sliding doors, remote control transponder/keyfobs, airbags, wireless remote starters, voice activated telephones and sound systems, and so forth. Many of these technologies improve safety, while others improve convenience for users. In many cases, consumers of vehicles are much or more concerned about technology included in each vehicle than performance of the actual vehicle.
Different systems exist to manage these different technologies. For example, some existing system architectures use antennas that are located away from the wireless control module (“WCM”), or other control modules, and are connected through a radio frequency (“RF”) cable. These data transmission cables and their connectors are expensive, and the increased length of the cables adds noise to the signal, interfering with the data transmitted between the receiver and the WCM.
In situations where more than one antenna is needed, there are additional RF cables required, and the WCM must use a RF switch to multiplex the different antennas.